COSMO 2026 — Collaboration for Outcomes Using Social Media in Oncology — was held in Chicago on August 7–8, 2026, a Women in Medicine VERITAS initiative. Senior advisors: Don Dizon, MD and Shikha Jain, MD. Co-chairs: Eric Singhi, MD and Karine Tawagi, MD. This post reports seven data points from the faculty slides: misinformation rates by platform, speaker concordance and patient trust, AI chatbot quality, platform reach by age, patient-advocate partnership, dissemination metrics, and mentorship.
Stacy Loeb, MD, Professor of Urology and Population Health at NYU Langone Health, presented “From Misinformation to Impact: How Online Content Shapes Prostate Cancer Care” on Saturday afternoon. The rates below are from the studies behind that slide.
| Platform | Prostate cancer misinformation | Source |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 77% of the top 150 videos contained potentially misinformative or biased content, reaching more than 6 million viewers | Loeb et al., Eur Urol 2019;75(4):564 |
| TikTok | 47% of videos carrying objective information contained a significant amount of misinformation | Xu et al., BJU Int 2021;128(4):435 |
| 40% of posts with objective information were misinformative | Xu et al., Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis 2022;25(4):791 | |
| 15% of pins returned by a prostate cancer search contained misinformation | Herbert et al., JMIR Cancer 2022;8(3):e36244 | |
| Podcasts | 12% contained moderate-to-high misinformation; 21% contained any amount | Scott et al., Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis 2024;27(1):153 |
A second slide listed the specific claims in circulation.
The categories on the slide: prostate cancer is sexually transmitted; masturbation causes it; alkaline diets, sugar avoidance or specific foods lower PSA; herbal teas, juices and smoothies cure cancer; melatonin, ivermectin and fenbendazole cure cancer; lower urinary tract symptoms and bone pain are early warning signs; prostate enlargement is a precursor to cancer; BPH medications cause cancer; PSA screening should be avoided; digital rectal examination is required yearly; biopsies spread cancer.
Loeb also presented an in-progress NIH R01 (grant R01 CA278997) building a typology of guideline-discordant prostate cancer information in English and Spanish, a qualitative study of how Black and Hispanic/Latinx patients perceive those posts, and a randomized trial of a digital skills intervention.
Loeb presented her randomized clinical trial of racial concordance and trust in online prostate cancer videos. Participants: 1,703 Black adults and 1,201 White adults.
Speaker race, Black vs. White: OR 1.62 (95% CI 1.28–2.05, p<0.001) among Black adults; OR 1.11 (0.83–1.48, p=0.49) among White adults. Speaker type, patient vs. physician: OR 0.63 (0.49–0.80, p<0.001) among Black adults; OR 0.71 (0.54–0.95, p=0.02) among White adults. Video topic, clinical trial vs. screening: OR 0.78 (0.62–0.99, p=0.04) among Black adults; OR 0.57 (0.42–0.76, p<0.001) among White adults.
Values are from the multivariable model, adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, education, personal cancer history, health literacy, eHealth literacy and medical mistrust. Source: Loeb S, Ravenell JE, Gomez SL, et al. JAMA Netw Open 2023;6(7):e2324395.
Loeb presented a JAMA Oncology brief report on four AI chatbots — ChatGPT 3.5, Perplexity, Chatsonic and Bing AI — given the top five search queries about each of the five most common cancers (skin, lung, breast, colorectal, prostate).
Quality: median DISCERN score 5 of 5. Misinformation: none identified. Actionability: median 20% on PEMAT. Understandability: median 66.7% on PEMAT. Reading level: college, by Flesch-Kincaid. Source: Pan A, Musheyev D, Bockelman D, Loeb S, Kabarriti AE. JAMA Oncol 2023;9(10):1437.
COSMO also ran a dedicated session on AI bias, data integrity and equity, with co-chair Karine Tawagi, MD alongside Anai Kothari, MD and Chadi Nabhan, MD.
Presented in the “Patients, Advocacy & Ethical Engagement” breakout hosted by patient advocate Allison Rosen, MS with David Bjork and Hannah Johnson, using Pew Research Center 2025 data.
Share of US adults using each platform, ages 50–64 and 65+: YouTube 85% and 64%; Facebook 74% and 57%; Instagram 40% and 19%; TikTok 30% and 12%; X 16% and 10%. Among adults 18–29, YouTube reaches 95% and X reaches 33%. The slide labels X as the platform for rapid real-time scientific conversation and YouTube as the most popular for in-depth education. Source: Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet, November 2025.
From the same breakout.
The slide pairs what each side contributes: lived experience, community perspective, authentic storytelling, patient priorities and peer support from the advocate; clinical expertise, evidence interpretation, medical accuracy, research context and professional credibility from the clinician. Stated shared outcomes: trusted education, better health literacy, reduced misinformation, more patient-centered communication, increased trust.
Three points the slide makes about practice. For rare driver mutations and niche malignancies, social media communities are often the only place to crowdsource experience and find specialized centers. Advocates help bridge geographic gaps for marginalized and community-based patients seeking trials. And, verbatim: “True engagement means treating advocates as peer collaborators in the digital space, not just a vehicle to retweet institutional press releases.”
Breakout takeaways reported by Darcy Burbage, DNP, RN, AOCN, who was on the team: as clinicians “be curious, not judgmental” about information patients bring from social media; be authentic and transparent; know your audience.
Megan-Claire Chase spoke on the closing patient panel. She posted before the meeting that she was self-funding the trip.
The closing patient advocate panel was moderated by Stephanie Graff, MD. Reported takeaways: ensure language is patient-friendly, invite and truly involve advocates in clinical trial design, and recognize that advocacy takes many different forms.
Clara Lee, MD, MPP, FACS, Professor at UNC Chapel Hill and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, presented “Dissemination of Research Through Social Media.” Her slide cited Pew Research Center 2025: 96% of US adults use the internet and 78% have home broadband. She noted that the next generation of cancer survivors will have used the internet and social media their entire lives.
Loeb presented reach and impression counts from two prospective dissemination studies: a prostate cancer genetics podcast series, funded by the Department of Defense, and a sponsored Facebook awareness campaign, funded by a Prostate Cancer Foundation Challenge Award.
Reach and impressions per campaign tile: “1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime” — reach 4,872, impressions 6,158. “Every 3 minutes, a man in the U.S. is diagnosed with prostate cancer” — reach 4,301, impressions 4,872. “Men who have a relative with prostate cancer are twice as likely to develop the disease” — reach 2,170, impressions 2,561.
Ronak Mistry, DO and Karine Tawagi, MD ran the workshop “Build, Connect, Rise: Education, Mentorship and Career Development in the Digital Age of Oncology.” It opened with two prompts.
Prompt A, The Gap: what is the biggest barrier you have faced or witnessed in your career advancement, and who or what helped you bridge it. Prompt B, The Gift: think of a mentor, sponsor or advocate who changed your trajectory, what specifically they did, and how that can happen in a digital space. The debrief recorded on the flip chart listed, under Gift: pinpoint event, more opportunities, ripple effect, connectivity.
Carolyn Taylor, Founder and Executive Director of Global Focus on Cancer, gave the keynote, “The Global Face of Cancer: Seeing Cancer Through a Human Lens.”
The slide reports 25+ countries and 250+ partnerships across five programme areas: peer support (Stronger Together), advocacy leadership across Africa (V.O.I.C.E.), gender-responsive implementation research (GRACE), the SE Asia Breast Cancer Symposium, and systems-change work with the WHO, The Lancet, ASCO and ICCP.
From the “Challenges of Social Media” slide in the “Patients, Advocacy & Ethical Engagement” breakout.
Pitfalls and risks listed: misinformation, lack of content regulation, privacy concerns (HIPAA), digital divide limiting access, potential for misinterpretation. Misinformation challenges listed: non-evidence-based treatments, screening myths, distrust in healthcare systems, viral spread of inaccurate content.
Sources cited on the slide: World Health Organization, Infodemic Management and Health Misinformation; Office of the Surgeon General, Advisory on Health Misinformation (2021); Vraga EK, Bode L, Political Communication 2019; Wang Y et al., Social Science & Medicine 2019.
Full session-by-session coverage, all key slides and every captured voice are on the COSMO 2026 conference page and the COSMO 2026 attendee network.
KOL Pulse tracks what verified oncology clinicians and patient advocates are actually discussing online. Voices and slides featured here: Stacy Loeb, MD; Darcy Burbage, DNP, RN, AOCN; Karine Tawagi, MD; Ronak Mistry, DO; Joseph McCollom, DO; Clara Lee, MD; Carolyn Taylor; and patient advocates Allison Rosen, MS, Megan-Claire Chase and Laura Esfeller. Slides are credited to the presenting speaker and the attendee who photographed them. Every post quoted is verbatim.
Figures are sourced to the peer-reviewed studies behind each slide: Loeb et al., CA Cancer J Clin 2024;74(5):453; JAMA Oncol 2023;9(10):1437; JAMA Netw Open 2023;6(7):e2324395; Pew Research Center, 2025. Editorial and educational content; not medical advice. © 2026 KOL Pulse.